The Citadel of Qaitbay

Qaitbay Citadel stands at the tip of a breakwater at the entrance to Alexandria's eastern harbour, surrounded by sea on three sides. It is the city's defining image.

It occupies the exact site of the Pharos of Alexandria — the lighthouse that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The location is superb. Sea on three sides, the whole curve of the Corniche visible from the ramparts, fishing boats working around the breakwater, and wind coming straight off the Mediterranean. After the heat of Upper Egypt it is a genuine change of climate.

The lighthouse connection is real, not marketing. The Pharos stood here for well over a thousand years before earthquakes brought it down, and when Sultan Qaitbay built his fort in the 1480s he used the fallen material. Large blocks and red granite columns in the walls are widely accepted as lighthouse stone.

More of the Pharos is in the water. Underwater surveys in the harbour have mapped a large field of blocks, columns and statuary, some of it lighthouse debris and some from the sunken royal quarter. Diving on it is possible with local operators.

The fort itself is compact and easy to walk, with a small naval museum inside.

The Pharos of Alexandria was built in the third century BC under Ptolemy II, stood over a hundred metres high, and remained one of the tallest structures in the world for centuries. A series of earthquakes between the tenth and fourteenth centuries brought it down.

Sultan Al-Ashraf Qaitbay built the fortress on the ruins in the 1480s as part of a chain of coastal defences against Ottoman expansion, using the fallen stone that was lying on the site. Granite columns and large blocks that almost certainly came from the lighthouse are visible in the walls.

The fort was damaged by the British naval bombardment of Alexandria in 1882, which also destroyed much of the surrounding city, and it has been restored several times since.

Since the 1990s underwater archaeology in the eastern harbour has recovered columns, sphinxes and colossal statuary from the seabed just off the fort — including blocks believed to be from the Pharos itself. Some of that material is now displayed on land; a good deal of it is still down there.

• The seaward ramparts and the view back along the Corniche
• Re-used granite blocks and columns in the walls, believed to come from the Pharos
• The mosque within the keep, one of the oldest surviving in Alexandria
• The naval museum inside the fort
• The fishing harbour immediately beside it, still working
• The position itself — you are standing on the footprint of one of the seven wonders
• The Mediterranean breaking against the breakwater on a windy day
• The evening crowd on the Corniche, which is Alexandria at its most itself